African National Congress (ANC) treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize has warned his party to unite in a bid to avoid losing power in 2019.
Mkhize was addressing a Congress of South African Trade Union (Cosatu) Workers’ Day event in Cape Town on Monday.
Speaking to a few hundred Cosatu members gathered at the Castle of Good Hope‚ he said it was still too early for his party to be removed from power‚ just 23 years after it had assumed power in the first democratic elections of 1994.
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“The threat for us to be unseated out of power is higher if we are divided. The threat of us being able to continue to manage the affairs of our country is undermined by our divisions … factionalism must be gotten rid off‚” said Mkhize.
He urged the ANC and its alliance partners to sit down‚ resolve their internal differences and make sure the party’s elective conference‚ set for December‚ was a unifying experience.
“It is not right for the ANC to get out of power. We are not the right generation to lose power in this country. We are the generation that actually fought in the trenches to bring about this democracy ...our revolution depends on us working together‚” added Mkhize.
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His warning comes amid heightened tensions within the ANC as the race heats up to replace President Jacob Zuma.
Numerous reports have linked Mkhize to a campaign to become the party’s deputy president in December.
Mkhize’s address came amid calls from both Cosatu and the South African Communist Party for Zuma to step down as the president.
Before his address‚ Cosatu marched to the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry to hand over a memorandum that called for business leaders involved in collusion to face jail time.
The march then proceeded to the provincial government offices where they accused Premier Helen Zille of racism and called for her to resign.
The call comes amid pressure‚ from within the Democratic Alliance‚ for Zille to be sacked for her tweets about colonialism not being all bad.
Cosatu also marched to Parliament to hand over a memorandum calling for Zuma to step down.
Speaking on calls by Cosatu for Zuma to step down‚ Mkhize said the matter was being dealt with by party structures.
“The issues that the comrades are raising about their reservations about the president‚ we believe that those issues must be discussed in the platforms of the alliance structures.”
On Zille‚ he endorsed Cosatu’s call for her to go‚ saying she was a leader who belonged to a post-Apartheid dispensation but still lingered on memories of how glorious it was to be under colonisation.
“Helen Zille must know that we reject her ideas about what colonialism was about and we say it is always an insult for someone who never suffered the indignity and insult of colonisation to come and pontificate on us to say how good it was that we were colonised‚” he added.
TMG Digital/TimesLIVE
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